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The problem I have with the GOP's obstructionism was not that it was checking power, but that it was purely political. They obstructed policies that had been su

by aggie 10y ago

The problem I have with the GOP's obstructionism was not that it was checking power, but that it was purely political. They obstructed policies that had been supporting by conservatives in the past, just because they didn't want Obama to be seen as having succeeded with anything. That is not what the checks and balances were designed for.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> but that it was purely political. Any governing action is entirely political; I think your problem is that it was entirely partisan.
redthrowaway 10y ago
A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!" And quite frankly, they succeeded. I think you're unfairly discounting how much of that was ideologically driven, rather than the result of simple partisanship.
- aggie 10y ago
  You can say that a strategy to regain power is an ideological action in the long run, but then what is the difference between ideology and partisanship?
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    It wasn't a strategy to regain power, it was a mission to prevent the President from inflicting further harm upon the country (according to conservative thought). There were plenty of Republicans who thought it would cost them in the elections. But they saw it as worthwhile to prevent the expansion of the welfare state and the enshrinement of Obama's progressive agenda in law. The notion that they wanted to make government work worse in order to bolster their claim that government doesn't work is what progressives tell each other, not what motivates conservatives. Ditto working class voters "voting against their interests", etc.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  > A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!" Given how much of it was their own agenda from 20 years back, what the hell was the point of that?
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    Which policy proposals did Republicans block that you think they would have been ideologically predisposed to embracing?
    - zb 10y ago
      Obama himself wanted single-payer healthcare, but was unable to get the support of conservative Democrats for that. What actually passed was based on the Republican proposals made in the 1990s in response to Hillarycare, and almost identical to the plan that Mitt Romney helped develop and pass in Massachusetts and which he (Romney) said should be the model for the nation. The individual mandate was originally suggested by the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affor... Every Republican voted against it. At no point did Republicans in Congress try to improve any of its manifest flaws, but instead they held hundreds of symbolic votes to repeal it and return to the status quo ante (which, prior to that, everyone had agreed was unacceptable - no presidential candidate of either party in living memory had failed to include healthcare reform in their platform). Republicans who had never objected to the individual mandate when they proposed it now claimed it was unconstitutional (Obama didn't help, by claiming for political reasons that it is not a tax). Romney ran for president on a platform that his healthcare plan was a good idea when he did it but a bad idea when Obama did it. To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok, and not simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit.
      - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        >To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok, and not simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit. To my ears, it comes across as a desire to have no health-care reform at all, and blame it on the Democrats to boot. They just want to dismantle and privatize every public service they can, regardless of whether people actually rely on it or not.

by aggie 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> but that it was purely political. Any governing action is entirely political; I think your problem is that it was entirely partisan.

redthrowaway 10y ago

A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!" And quite frankly, they succeeded. I think you're unfairly discounting how much of that was ideologically driven, rather than the result of simple partisanship.

aggie 10y ago
You can say that a strategy to regain power is an ideological action in the long run, but then what is the difference between ideology and partisanship?
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  It wasn't a strategy to regain power, it was a mission to prevent the President from inflicting further harm upon the country (according to conservative thought). There were plenty of Republicans who thought it would cost them in the elections. But they saw it as worthwhile to prevent the expansion of the welfare state and the enshrinement of Obama's progressive agenda in law. The notion that they wanted to make government work worse in order to bolster their claim that government doesn't work is what progressives tell each other, not what motivates conservatives. Ditto working class voters "voting against their interests", etc.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
> A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!" Given how much of it was their own agenda from 20 years back, what the hell was the point of that?
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  Which policy proposals did Republicans block that you think they would have been ideologically predisposed to embracing?
  - zb 10y ago
    Obama himself wanted single-payer healthcare, but was unable to get the support of conservative Democrats for that. What actually passed was based on the Republican proposals made in the 1990s in response to Hillarycare, and almost identical to the plan that Mitt Romney helped develop and pass in Massachusetts and which he (Romney) said should be the model for the nation. The individual mandate was originally suggested by the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affor... Every Republican voted against it. At no point did Republicans in Congress try to improve any of its manifest flaws, but instead they held hundreds of symbolic votes to repeal it and return to the status quo ante (which, prior to that, everyone had agreed was unacceptable - no presidential candidate of either party in living memory had failed to include healthcare reform in their platform). Republicans who had never objected to the individual mandate when they proposed it now claimed it was unconstitutional (Obama didn't help, by claiming for political reasons that it is not a tax). Romney ran for president on a platform that his healthcare plan was a good idea when he did it but a bad idea when Obama did it. To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok, and not simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      >To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok, and not simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit. To my ears, it comes across as a desire to have no health-care reform at all, and blame it on the Democrats to boot. They just want to dismantle and privatize every public service they can, regardless of whether people actually rely on it or not.